The Patient Approach is a platform for creativity created and overseen by Milo and Moose. Join us for podcasts, articles and more as we explore topics both serious and silly.

Blog Archive

Tuesday, 31 May 2016

The Homeless League

Ideas and Opinions | Milo

This is a short essay about the strangest stereotype in fiction, that being the fact that homeless people are all apparently extremely well connected and have secret talents and powers, and why it should be avoided by creators

I hate to break it to you but the
homeless have been conning you this whole time, you see despite their ill-fitting
clothes, poor hygiene and general lack of housing they are actually the ears
and eyes of the city. In fact you could argue that the homeless and their “Homeless
Leagues” runs the city.

This is, of course, absolute
bullshit, but it’s an oddly persistent stereotype I’ve seen cropping up again and
again, from video games such as the Elder Scrolls series and the Yakuza series,
to Korean dramas like ‘Last’, schlocky action movies like ‘The Quest’ and many
novels in the Charles Dickens tradition. Ultimately the homeless are
represented as either belonging to some sort of network of other homeless
people, having any number of secret or underappreciated skills, or simply
living a life not too dissimilar from slightly abstemious working class people.
For instance, in Oblivion and Skyrim (two games in the Elder Scrolls series)
information gathering often starts with speaking to the homeless, as it does in
many other fantasy games and novels. In ‘Last’ it is revealed that there is a
hierarchy of criminals built from the homeless up, with a $30 million cache belonging to the man at the
top. In both ‘The Quest’ and ‘Oliver Twist’ you have a motley crew of ragamuffins
and street urchins led by a dangerous and charismatic leader (albeit in the
former that leader is the hero, and in the latter the villain).

I believe that this stereotype exists
for two reasons: (1) because of a narrative need (2) because of a lack of
exposure and awareness about homelessness.

The first reason is easy to
tackle because it is the same reason why many spousal characters are dull and why
many children’s TV show heroes are either orphans or on a journey. When you
create a story you have a persistent need to explain away real life whilst simultaneously
borrowing from it; let me clarify this with a few examples. If I’m reading a
book with a 28 years old protagonist I’m going to be constantly thinking about
his romantic life until it has been explained, because in real life emotional,
sexual and financial needs make relationships an increasing necessity as you
get older. So whether it’s important to the story or not, we need to know what
recourse this man has if he is either lonely, horny or broke. In this same way
if we want to believe that our 11 years old hero is really on a mission to save the world, we need a quick and easy reason
to explain why her mother hasn’t yet called the police when she is missing for
months at a time. To return to our focus, then, another problem that occurs in
all genres of art is that of information gathering i.e. how does our protagonist
know what they know, when we need them to know it? The homeless present an easy
solution to this dilemma especially in the fantasy genre where a precedent has
already been set, moreover they have no responsibilities that would inhibit
their ability to appear and disappear as the needs of the narrative changes. Furthermore,
in a story where you need your protagonist to “go underground”, the homeless
are a fantastic option to contextualize this part of the story. This also helps
to explain why they frequently have “networks” and secret talents, because you
need somebody to give your hero the means to return to their struggle. In real
life when most people go underground they become homeless, and who wants to read
about homeless people? Am I right?

That last sentence leads us onto
the second reason for this stereotype and that is a lack of awareness about the
homeless on behalf of the creator and their audience. Many people still look
upon the homeless as ultimately being a nuisance who have brought trouble on
themselves. They are alcoholics, drug addicts and criminals who are just as
likely to rob you as spend your “donation” on plastic bottle booze. The reality
is far bleaker, as across the world the homeless are more likely to be victims
of crime than they are to be the perpetrators. I think that some successful
people have a habit of believing that you are the sole engineer of your own success,
and so if you are unsuccessful it is your fault for failing. The problem with this
assumption, however, is most obvious when it comes to financial success. Wealth
is only one indicator of success and one that hinges as much on your upbringing
as it does on any specific skills you may or may not have. To illustrate my
point let’s look at the many artists whose paintings sell for millions but whom
died penniless and broken. What about the countless number of legendary boxers
who were incredibly accomplished sportsman but often found themselves bankrupt?
On the flip side let’s look at Donald Trump a man whose business successes are
few and whose “successes” have more to do with his last name and hair than they
do with his fiscal acumen. The point being that you cannot readily assume
that the homeless are the sole architects of their poverty, as you are not the
sole architect of your successes.

People in general seem to be
unsettled by the hardship of strangers, it’s perhaps then no wonder that I can
name more overseas relief charities than domestic ones. People oversees aren’t
strangers they are less than that, they’re characters much like the homeless
people in our games and films. People on our streets though are the worst kind
of strangers, they are people who could become acquaintances and then
dependents. We don’t, however, feel this same uneasiness around teachers,
doctors or accountants; we don’t feel this uneasiness around strangers who
give, only strangers who ask. Hardship is contagious, it doesn’t keep to one
person it spreads whether that be through guilt, charity or mutual hardship. So
in response to this we ignore the hardship completely and attempt to pretend
like it doesn’t even exist. In the 21st Century, however, this is an
impossible task because we are all too informed to feign ignorance.

This is especially true of
creators because we actually have a need to understand our world in order to
create plausible fictions and worthwhile aesthetic treatments. We cannot
pretend as though “The Homeless League” is an acceptable stereotype to propagate,
because it is so opposed to reality as to make it immersion breaking. This isn’t
an attempt to say that you have to politicize your work or address social ills,
whether you are sympathetic to homeless people or not, but that you have to
realise that you cannot oversimplify their plight. To do so is little more than
intellectual laziness and displays a lack of pride in one’s work. Work harder
to create new fictions based on this world, do not instead borrow from older
fictions in order to save yourself a bit of effort.

Afterward: After writing this it occurred to me that saying nothing to directly benefit the homeless would be a severe oversight. Check out Passage for information on how you can help out at a homeless kitchen, or Shelter who are probably the biggest charity for the homeless in England.